Rescuers recovered 46 more bodies from the charred debris of a textile mill in southeastern Bangladesh yesterday, raising the death toll from the devastating fire to 52, officials said.
The fire that broke out late on Thursday at the Bangladeshi-owned KTS Textile Mill near the port city of Chittagong also injured more than 150 workers, 82 of whom were hospitalized, doctors at Chittagong Medical College Hospital said.
More than 1,000 workers, many of them women, were inside when the fire broke out, said Abu Tayeb, an official of a textile manufacturers' and exporters' association. Most managed to leave the building on their own, he said.
Rescuers, including villagers and soldiers, were sifting through the rubble searching for survivors or bodies at the site of the three-story building at an industrial park near Chittagong, about 215km southeast of the capital, Dhaka.
Most of the victims were women who burned to death or died from smoke inhalation, a doctor at the medical college said.
The factory had only one main exit, and workers had to scramble through a lone narrow stairway to escape, while others jumped from windows, said fire official Rashidul Islam, quoting survivors.
Firefighters took about three hours to control Thursday's blaze, which was exacerbated when an electric generator and boiler exploded, fire officials said.
Small fires continued to erupt sporadically, because of cloth and chemical dyes stored in the basement and wood-and-bamboo scaffolding on the under-construction fourth floor, Islam said.
The fire may have been triggered by sparks from an electric tool, a fire investigator said.
Police cordoned off the factory to prevent relatives and looters from rushing in, and local authorities ordered other nearby factories to stay shut.
Many of the country's estimated 2,500 textile factories are built in violation of building codes or safety standards, and labor unions claim that many lack emergency exits, fire extinguishers or alarms and first-aid equipment.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS